To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://management.silicon.com/itdirector/0,39024673,39168798,00.htm

Photos: Are you part of The IT Crowd?
Show's writer spills the beans on the characters...

By Gemma Simpson

Published: Friday 12 October 2007

The IT Crowd is a sitcom about a group of social misfits which make up the IT support team in the dingy basement of a successful company in London.

The show is centred around three main characters (pictured from left to right) - Moss, Jen and Roy - who, despite the company's utter dependence on their services, are ignored and despised by the rest of the staff.

silicon.com caught up with the show's writer and director, Graham Linehan, to find out what makes IT so funny and where the inspiration for the characters came from.

Linehan told silicon.com Moss' character is based on a version of the actor who plays him - Richard Ayoade - which "I know he has easy access to", while "Roy is based on me and Jen is very loosely based on my wife".

Linehan said IT is a "soft background" for the show in that "it's always there, so I don't really have to mention it - very much like religion in Father Ted", which Linehan also penned.

"Now the comedy comes a little more from the characters and the Seinfeldian situations," he added.

Photo credit: Channel 4